"Nim Chimpsky:" The tale of a chimp in human jungle

"Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human"

by Elizabeth Hess

Bantam, 369 pp., $23

Raising an animal as a human being seems a quaint if misguided notion in this age of heightened understanding of animal behavior and animal "rights." But this was the organizing principle of a bold 1973 experiment to disprove Noam Chomsky's contention that learning language is unique to humans. In a playful dig at the famous linguist, the simian subject of the study was named Nim Chimpsky.

Elizabeth Hess' splendid account of the project, "Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human," amounts to a biography of Nim, a story every bit as stirring and elaborate as that of a famous person. Soon after his birth, Nim was acquired by Columbia psychology professor Herbert Terrace and placed in the New York City home of Stephanie and W.E.R. LaFarge. Nim was to be raised like one of their children — wearing kid's clothing and brushing his teeth every day — and be taught to communicate with American Sign Language (ASL). Terrace and a team of graduate students and others helped with his care and teaching. The project attracted national attention.

Nim was adept at ASL, but the project faced huge challenges. As he grew older, Nim became more difficult to handle. The chimp increasingly tested and sometimes terrorized his caretakers by escaping, throwing tantrums, and all too often, biting them. Terrace had a difficult time maintaining the scientific rigor of the study. Funding was always a challenge.

The project eventually fizzled, and in 1977 Nim was sent back to the primate research center in Oklahoma where he was born. Over the next few years researchers from the University of Oklahoma continued to involve him and other chimps in language studies. Nim's fate took a turn for the worse in 1981 when he and other chimpanzees were sold to a medical research lab, where his situation attracted the attention of author and animal advocate Cleveland Amory.

Hess' training as a journalist helps her navigate the complexities and high emotions of the academic world, replete with its big egos, jealousies, infidelities, bullying and back-stabbing. (In some ways, the human behavior is exposed as much more odious than any outbursts by captive chimps.) The project failed to prove its premise, yet Nim's upbringing gave him unmistakably humanlike qualities — he was a charmer to the end — and focused broad attention on human treatment of animals, foreshadowing the growth the animal-rights movement. Hess' book also raises intriguing questions about what constitutes language.